Abacavir / Lamivudine News

WEDNESDAY, June 21, 2017 – There are mixed results from a new study on the use of monetary rewards to help boost the odds that HIV-infected patients will enter care, and take their meds as directed. The study, conducted at HIV clinics in New York City and Washington, D.C., found that financial incentives such as gift cards could improve the likelihood that HIV patients would take antiretroviral ...

WEDNESDAY, May 31, 2017 – More Americans with HIV are sticking with medications that turn a fatal disease into a manageable condition, a new study shows. "This represents a lot of people who are not dying and not infecting others," said study corresponding author Ira Wilson, chair of Brown University's Health Services Policy and Practice Department, in Providence, R.I. "These differences ...

THURSDAY, Dec. 1, 2016 – A significant number of people with HIV have strains of the AIDS-causing virus that are resistant to both older and newer drugs, researchers report. The researchers looked at 712 HIV patients worldwide whose infection was not controlled by antiretroviral drugs. They found that 16 percent of patients whose infection was resistant to modern drugs had HIV mutations linked ...

MONDAY, June 13, 2016 – Many newly infected HIV patients experience neurological problems, but they tend to be mild and they subside after antiretroviral drugs are given, a new study finds. "We were surprised that neurologic findings were so pervasive in participants diagnosed with very recent HIV infection," said study author Dr. Joanna Hellmuth. She is a clinical fellow in the department of ...

FRIDAY, May 6, 2016 – Although HIV infection and transmission rates in the United States declined over the past five years, they fell short of White House targets, a new study finds. Between 2010 and 2015, new HIV infections decreased 11 percent and transmission of the AIDS-causing virus declined 17 percent, far less than the goals set in 2010 as part of the U.S. National HIV/AIDS Strategy ...

TUESDAY, Feb. 23, 2016 – A drug used to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission during pregnancy may slow language development slightly in children, a new study suggests. Researchers followed more than 900 infants who were born to HIV-positive mothers but were not infected by the AIDS-causing virus. All of the mothers took antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy. Some of the treatment regimens ...

MONDAY, Feb. 22, 2016 – An insertable vaginal ring containing a month's supply of a continuous-release HIV prevention drug reduced the risk of HIV in African women by at least 27 percent, a new study found. The ring works by slowly and continuously delivering a highly localized and controlled amount of the antiretroviral medication dapivirine. This drug aims to halt the ability of HIV – the ...

FRIDAY, Feb. 5, 2016 – While HIV diagnoses dropped significantly over the past decade in the United States, blacks with HIV are less likely than whites or Hispanics to receive routine, ongoing care, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 2005 to 2014, annual HIV diagnoses fell 19 percent in the United States. Infections among black women dropped 42 percent during ...

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 27, 2016 – Even when blood tests of HIV patients on antiretroviral drugs show no sign of the AIDS-causing virus, it can still be replicating in lymphoid tissue, researchers report. The study offers important new insight into how HIV persists in the body despite treatment with the powerful drugs, according to the team of international researchers led by Northwestern University's ...

MONDAY, Dec. 21, 2015 – Gay and bisexual men who have abstained from sex for one year will now be allowed to donate blood in the United States. The new policy, announced Monday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, reverses a three-decades-old ban on donations from this group of men that traces back to the start of the AIDS epidemic. "The FDA's responsibility is to maintain a high level of ...

MONDAY, Dec. 7, 2015 – Young American gay and bisexual men who have detectable blood levels of HIV – the virus that causes AIDS – are also more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior that might spread the virus, a new study has found. "While many of these young men are engaged in care, and success stories are many, we still have work to do to reduce the rate of new infections," study author ...

MONDAY, Dec. 7, 2015 – The number of Americans diagnosed with HIV each year declined by about one-fifth during the past decade, but not all groups saw drops in prevalence, a federal government study shows. Between 2005 and 2014, the overall annual number of HIV diagnoses fell 19 percent – from nearly 48,800 to just over 39,700 a year. The drop was led by a 63 percent decline among injection ...

MONDAY, Oct. 12, 2015 – Not only does effective HIV therapy thwart the AIDS-causing virus, it may also reduce the risk for hepatitis B infection, a new study says. "What this means to us is that effective HIV therapy appears to restore an impairment in the immune response that protects someone with HIV from acquiring hepatitis B infection," study senior author Dr. Chloe Thio, a professor of ...

WEDNESDAY, July 1, 2015 – Even after the advent of powerful medications for suppressing HIV, a new study finds that more than one-third of people in San Francisco who were diagnosed with an AIDS-related infection died within five years. "The main cause of mortality arises from people stopping treatment entirely," said Dr. Robert Grant, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, ...

THURSDAY, June 25, 2015 – It's unlikely that a single vaccine would ever enable the body to neutralize the HIV virus, but a sequence of immunizations might hold the key, a new mouse study suggests. The immune system could be guided in a series of steps to develop a special type of HIV-fighting antibody, a team of researchers said. Each immunization would be customized for specific stages of the ...